The Oscar-winning Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu is in shock and is downright mystified as to how a rumor that Leonardo DiCaprio's character – in his much anticipated new film "The Revenant" – was raped by a bear during a scene spread, and how people came to believe such a thing.
"It's almost a 'Saturday Night Live' skit. It's fantastic," the director said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
"I find it hilarious, and pathetic in a way. You have one guy in a garage inventing something that’s then shared by somebody else. And then a newspaper acknowledges it as news, and then it triggers papers around the world...What's unbelievable is the validation. When I first saw it I thought it was a joke. But then it gets validation, and the studio actually has to release a statement that there was no bear rape. It's like a crazy mad comedy."
The "DiCaprio raped by a bear" rumor spread this past week so fast and widely that it prompted FOX to release an official statement denying the claim.
“As anyone who has seen the movie can attest, the bear in the film is a female who attacks Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio's character) because she feels he might be threatening her cubs,” a Fox spokesperson told Entertainment Weekly in an exclusive statement. “There is clearly no rape scene with a bear.”
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The claim, first posted by the Drudge Report, included quoted sources saying that DiCaprio was raped twice and that people in a preview screening of the movie walked out of the theater in disgust.
The highly anticipated film by Inarritu, who won the Oscar for "Birdman," debuts in limited release on Christmas Day and world wide January 8th.
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